schneich

poured it on a silpat with aluminum rulers... i cut it with the guitar cutter... no sticking at all... cheers t.

i can confirm now that nick´s recipe is really good. it makes a very creamy smooth yet a little sweeter caramel, perhaps a little chewier than my previous trials. whats really weird is that you need to cook this recipe to 120c, if you cook it to 116c its to soft too handle. can it be that the sorbitol (i had no pulverized, so i used double amount liquid sorbitol) keeps more water bound even though the temperature rises ?? questions over questions :-)

nick please try to explain unctous... :-/ even though iam still at the original recipe, not the fruit one. i now did several more batches, but i seems liek my caramel is not as homogenous as i would like, when you cut it and look really close you can see its a tiny little bit grainy... dunno where that comes from... my guess is that iam over the top with the fat content...does anyone know how much fat can be put in a caramel that is cooked to 116c, the water content is the same anyway, also my caramels are quite greasy to the touch, genins are a little bit greasy as well, but only very slightly here is my last attempt: caramel genin type 3.0 1000g fresh cream 35% 750g sucrose 100g glucose 400g butter 2g sodium bicarbonate i boil the cream with glucose and sugar dry caramelize the sugar, cook to 114c add the butter and bring it to 116c pour in frame...

iam just collecting all the footage, give me another day or so... btw the german contestant trained here in cologne in the "konditormeisterschule" and our chef patissier (matthias ludwigs) was defeated by her in the german finals... :-( he is A LOT better than she is... he just publishesd his first book with a whopping 359 pages http://www.amazon.de/Ludwigs-Patisserie-Inspirationen-perfekte-Dessert/dp/3875151127 cheers t.

you guys are just great :-) @lior: i thought of that too, does anyone know if it would make sense to add cocoa butter ??

for what exact reason the sodium bicarb. is added ?? it was in the original morato recipe so i put it in... does it act as some kind of catalyst to prevent further inverting of the sugar, or does it contribute to the caramel flavour ????

i keep all my trials in clingfilm at room temp. i think you definately need to have both cream and butter ;-) i hope the 100 glucose is enough to prevent crystallization. since i really dislike the stickyness of glucose i will try invert sugar if my caramel shows signs of crystallization. to keep the emulsion stable i also thought of adding some "glice" from the texturas range...

dry caramelize, but not too dark, but i didnt noisette the butter.... my caramels are so soft that i can easily cut them with the guitar :-) @mostlylana: great find, thanks :-)

last trial: 1000 cream 35%, 750 sugar, 100 gluco, 400 butter (beurre isigny demisel), 2g sodiumbicarbonate, cook to 116c = perfect consistency, tastewise 96% there...

hi kerry, nice to have you on the topic :-) the questions concerning your previous thread is: did you nail the "genin" consistency, because thats what iam after. i think "noisetting" the butter deepens the flavour a lot. i also figuered that caramelizing the sugar dry also helps. i sensed that when i deglaced the caramelized sugar with the hot cream the initial fragrance was caramelized sugar. further into the reducing cream process the strong "burnt sugar" fragrance turned into a buttery caramel one. so my assumption is that the addition of caramelized sugar, cream and "caramelized" butter makes the richness and deepnes of the flavour. when i cook the cream together with sugar it seems like the sugar doesnt get the right caramelization, only the cream seems to caramelize leaving the result tasting one dimensional. for my next trial iam gonna get a sweet cream beurre cru from the normandie, i guess sweet cream butter might make a difference.. cheers t.

i just came back from my trip to the salon du chocolat. on our second and third day we visited all the good places in paris. we went also to jacques genin marvelous shop, where we had the chance to talk to the master himself. of course we tried his caramels of which i heard a lot beforehand. before i tasted them i thought they were just caramels, like i tasted many before. so we left the place with a 30,- euro box of chocolats and a 14 euro bag of caramels. as soon as we left the shop i poped one of the suckers into my mouth, it was just HEAVEN they we soo soft an unctuos, with a deeeep creamy buttery caramel flavour, so i turn on the foot and spend another 34 euros on a box of caramels, on top we bought a bag of mango-caramels he kept in the cooling for freshness he said. soon i knew i HAVE to make these caramels for my customers, so i spent the better part of this beuatiful sunday in the pastry shop, trying to get anywhere near his recipe. the first attempt was the greweling soft caramel recipe with fresh cream. bsides beeing chewy beyond good belief it lacked 90% of the deep flavour. second attempt a recipe from a french patissier schoolbook called "caramel mou" which uses 700 sugar, 900 glucose, 1l cream 35%, and 200 butter. since in this recipe sugars and cream are cooked together it too lacked any deep caramel flavour, and was besides beeing sticky a miraculous substance which could be pulled into long ribbons even when cold :-( my next attempt is a recipe from morato which i pimped a little bit it consisted of 750 35% cream, 700 sugar, 150 gluco, 200 butter, 2 sod. bicarb. - i added another 200g butter, dry caramelized the sugar, boiled cream, gluco and bicarb, and turned the butter into a beurre noisette before mixing into the 114c caramel. the result was a bit darker than genins, and since i brought it to 118 a bit tougher, but flavourrichnesswise it was already quite close. next thing would be to cook the dry caramel a bit lighter, put a little bit more salt and cook to 116. any suggestioins are very welcome. cheers torsten s.

we will be at the salon du chocolat on thursday, i wont give uop the hope (as two years ago) to meet some egullet folks. if anyone is going, maybe we couldmeet or/and have a nice brasserie dinnner afterwards ?? cheers torsten p.s. i will extensively document the show with my brandnew zi8 in HD so be prepared for a paris report live on tape from egullet-tv :-) HOST'S NOTE: This is an member-organized event, not an official eGullet Society event. Please see here for the terms under which this event is listed in eG Forums.

hi, we are visiting the salon du chocolat on the weekend, and we would like to have two dinners, with a focus on a great dessert, besides christophe michalak, who are the best (and most progressive) pastry chefs in paris and which are the restaurants they work in ???? thanks for sharing your knowledge... t.

you guys are so cool :-) t.

@sebastian thats only partially true, of course a lot of chocolate manfacturers rely on companies like cargill to do the "bean to liquor" process for them, but doesnt mean a thing since they only use the cocoa that you give them, i have a friend who works for a major company and she is in charge of the raw cocoa bean testing, she tells me that there are HUGE differences. sometimes they get qualitites which are foul, stinking and moldy (we all know where this stuff goes ;-). also companies differ in how small the particles are grinded. cluizel for example grinds a whole lot smaller than most of the other companies resulting in the very smooth melting mouthfeel they are famous for.... cheers t. p.s. btw its the cocoa butter content not the lecithin that makes a chocolate more fluid ;-)

cluizel elianza is a new great white couverture, very fluid and not that pricey (7 euros/kg) cheers t.

to me the cherries look more like griottines ?! t.

easiest recipe for dulce de leche = take a few tins of sweetened condensed milk, simmer for 4 hours, voila dulce de leche !!! cheers t.

strip the cost off his wages and tell him to take the stuff home, i promise you he will never do it again ;-) cheers t.

moreno sugar = brown sugar, did u acutally try your recipe ?? i think you reduce your milk plenty while cooking... cheers t.

classic french is that eggs and sugar should never be beaten but mixed carefully otherwise you will get some kind of sabayon . if you ever cooked an anglaise in a themomix you never want to do it another way.. cheers t.

if you want to control your confections shelf life you need to do the following: get an aW measuring device, it will give you confidence in your product. an aW reading above 0.80 is save for up to 2 month (to go below 0.6 is absolutely unnecessary) if produced under good condition with least possible contamination. get a copy of jp wybauws second book (fine chocolates 2) he is truly the grandmaster of chocolate. his is specialised in inshelf life of chocolates. you find many versatile recipes for all sorts od ganaches, even some with a very long shelf life. use as many different sugar types as possible (glucose, invert sugar, sorbitol or even glycerol) invert sugar, sorbitol and glycarol are very powerful in reducing aW values if you combine them they are even mightier. avoid expensive tools that claim to make your ganache more hygienic by mixing in vacuum. the moment you release the vacuum you get microbes an spores back into your product ;-) cheers torsten schöneich

just tried an anglaise from this valrhona recipe book (by the way the best collection of base recipes i know of, very reliable!). and i have to say it made a PERFECT anglaise hassle free in less then 8 minutes smooth as silk :-9 so far iam impressed.... cheers t.

hey... how cool is that, cant wait to see it finished :-) cheers and best wishes.. torsten

hi, i just got my FREE thermomix form the vorwerk area rep today LOL :-) now there are really lots and lots of recipes. i would like to start a thread which collects all cool professional pastry recipes possible. for example i read something about flavour osmosis with fresh herbs and maltodextrin... i hope this thread will be busy ;-) cheers torsten